Enduring Grace
The faith to believe in change over the long term
“Within ten years, Henry had stopped using the n-word…” So said Anthony Ray Hinton in an interview I stumbled upon last week. My older son and I where going on a quick errand, and I happened to have left he radio on in the truck, so when we got in, NPR started to play. Specifically, the show No Small Endeavor. Hosted by Lee C. Camp, theology professor at Lipscomb University, No Small Endeavor is a podcast and show that I’d recently become aware of and come to enjoy, so I recognized Camp’s voice. I didn’t recognize the voice of his interviewee, but I was gripped by what I was hearing. I ended up sitting in the parking lot of the store we were going to so that I could listen to what turned out to be the end of the show. I joined in at approximately the starting point marked below in the unabridged interview with Hinton.
As I listened to the unfolding story Hinton was telling regarding his slow-growing friendship with Henry, I was struck by the grace and possibility of friendship extended by him, a black man, to an initially unrepentant racist. And yet, it was precisely the patience and openness with which Hinton approached Henry Hays, a Ku Klux Klan member on Alabama’s death row for the murder of a black man, that allowed him the space he needed to change. By the time Hinton recounted Henry’s last words, it was impossible for my eyes to remain dry—for multiple reasons: Hinton’s magnanimity toward Hays, the fact of Hays’ transformation. The fact that Hinton bestowed the word “friend” on Hays. The fact that the state was executing Henry Hays in what seemed a counter-example to the possibility of redemption. The sense that redemption had taken place in what to appearances might seem such an unlikely context—but which might bespeak a necessary uniqueness that allowed redemption to occur.
Ultimately, what moved me most was the patience that Hinton showed. I think that was the defining characteristic of the charity he showed Henry. He gave him the time and the space to change, precisely because he wasn’t in a hurry. Hinton was willing to wait to see what time, grace, and the Holy Spirit might do in Hays’ life. This strikes me as an essentially counter-cultural act, one that was essential to the equally counter-cultural act of not writing off Hays as a lost cause. Just an evil human being. Not worth the effort. You can add your own summary of the assessments our society might make.
And Hinton exhibited such patience in spite of the fact that he was there, on death row with Hays, for a crime he had not committed, and for which he would be exonerated only after serving thirty years. This was a powerful testimony to Hinton’s faith. It’s an example of and testimony to what I might call enduring grace. This intentionally points to a multi-layered meaning. The enduring grace of God in all circumstances, perhaps especially the most challenging and those where it seems least likely. The enduring grace that allows the believer to have patience. And finally, the fact that acting as we ought as followers of Jesus, sometimes mean bearing up and enduring a circumstance that we would most definitely rather not be in the midst of, but which will nevertheless—or perhaps even because of the difficulty—be an occasion for the revealing of God’s grace.
If you’re interested in Hinton’s story, you can check out his book, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. To listen to the interview below (set to start where I first started listening last week), just click play.
Another example of the idea of enduring grace came to me a few days before. I had heard of Alexei Navalny, and I was aware of his tragic death while imprisoned in Russia. What I was unaware of, is that Navalny was a Christian. It wasn’t until I saw the post below from Fr. James Martin, that I discovered that Navalny’s faith had an impact on his actions. But discovering that made his actions, and his ability to defy Putin, make more sense:
Inspired by Fr. Martin’s comments, I searched “Navalny, Chrsitian” and it eventually led me to his closing remarks at his 2021 trial, where I found that he said this:
But, nevertheless, closing remarks means you have to say your closing remarks. I don’t know what to talk about anymore, your honour. If you want I’ll talk to you about God and salvation. I’ll turn up the volume of heartbreak to the maximum, so to speak. The fact is that I am a Christian, which usually rather sets me up as an example for constant ridicule in the Anti-Corruption Foundation, because mostly our people are atheists and I was once quite a militant atheist myself. But now I am a believer, and that helps me a lot in my activities, because everything becomes much, much easier. I think about things less. There are fewer dilemmas in my life, because there is a book in which, in general, it is more or less clearly written what action to take in every situation. It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying. And so, as I said, it’s easier for me, probably, than for many others, to engage in politics.
A man recently wrote to me, ‘Navalny, why does everyone write to you, “Hold on, don’t give up, be patient, grit your teeth?” What do you have to tolerate? You kind of said in the interview that you believe in God. The Bible says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Well, that’s just great for you, isn’t it!” And I thought, how well this man understands me! Because it’s not that I’m fine, but I’ve always thought that this particular commandment is more or less an instruction to activity. And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back, or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing. On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction. Because at some difficult moment I did as required by the instructions, and did not betray the commandment. {Read them all}
I found this to be a powerful testimony to the sort of patient endurance of God’s grace—that is, the patient endurance enabled by the grace of God, which is also therefore evidence of the grace of God, but which also requires endurance on the part of the faithful. Navalny goes on to testify to a hope that I believe only faith can animate:
There are many other things I would like to happen in this country. And that’s why we need to fight not so much against Russia being unfree, but against her being, overall, in all respects unhappy. Russia is always…we have everything, but nevertheless, we’re an unhappy country. Open any work of Russian literature, and God, you’ll be amazed – description after description of unhappiness and suffering. We are a very unhappy country. We’re in a vicious circle of unhappiness that we can’t escape from. But of course, it would be good to, and I am therefore proposing to change our slogan. It’s not enough for Russia to be free, Russia should also be happy. Russia will be happy. That is all from me.
The thing is, I wonder if this hope, this assurance, is a particular example of the ways in which the eschatological hope—often derided in our time as justice delayed and therefore denied, an opiate to satisfy the masses who suffer under the heel of oppressors—actually demonstrates its inherent power to break into the present. Because things shall be well, shall be made well, in the future, we are freed from the weight of achieving such things on our own, actually enables us to work to make things better here and now. This comes into focus in a letter Navalny wrote to another Russian dissident, Natan Sharansky, which I became aware of through Pastor Jason Micheli’s sermon (which I commend to you):
Immediately after his murder, the Free Press published letters Alexei Navalny had exchanged with the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky.
Sharansky, a Jewish journalist, had been a prisoner in the same Gulag during the 1970’s about which Sharansky wrote a memoir entitled Fear No Evil. After reading the Fear No Evil, Navalny wrote to Sharansky, and Sharansky replied with two letters of his own. What’s striking about their correspondence is how replete it is with scripture and the moral clarity the Bible demands.
In his final letter to Sharansky, dated April 11, 2023, Navalny concludes with this confession of faith:
“In your alma mater— that is, this Gulag— everything is as it was. Traditions are honored. On Friday evening, they let me out of solitary, today on Monday—I got another 15 days. Everything according to the Book of Ecclesiastes: what was, will be. But I continue to believe that God will correct it and one day there will be what was not. And will not be what was.
Hugs,
A”
Read or listen to it all here:
A consistent theme in my sermons—one that comes up in the homily I posted earlier this week, in fact—is the theme of how God empowers us to do things that we would be incapable of doing on our own. The order is always important—actions the go beyond the normal human capacity, are not moralistic calls to heroic virtue, but are instead illustrations of the ways in which the Holy Spirit stretches us to do more than we are naturally or intrinsically capable of. These are things we cannot be harangued into such things—it is only by the recognition of God’s enduring grace with us that we can be at peace and embody the sort of enduring grace that challenges injustice and changes things—beginning with us.